Building a More Survivable ‘Future’ for the Army

The Army once planned to build a family of networked, electric-powered combat vehicles that would use information — instead of inches of armor — to help them survive on the battlefield. Now, it looks like the service is completely rethinking its approach.

Yesterday, the Army issued a request for proposals for a new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), a fleet of armored vehicles that can survive everything from relatively primitive roadside bombs to the latest anti-tank weapons. It’s an important shift: Instead of building next-gen tanks and infantry carriers suited for fighting a high-end, conventional adversary, the Army wants a more versatile vehicle that can survive “asymmetric” threats.

Speaking today at the Association of the United States Army convention in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said the new vehicle would take into account the lessons learned from fighting insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Stew Magnuson of National Defense magazine has the key quote: “It is not just FCS warmed over,” Chiarelli said.

The general was referring to Future Combat Systems, the service’s ill-starred effort to replace its heavy armor brigades with lightweight, networked combat vehicles. Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Defense Secretary Robert Gates effectively scrapped those plans, saying that FCS vehicles did not take into account the threat from lethal, but relatively low-end, roadside bombs.

“The FCS vehicles — where lower weight, higher fuel efficiency, and greater informational awareness are expected to compensate for less armor — do not adequately reflect the lessons of counterinsurgency and close-quarters combat in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gates said.

But that doesn’t mean that the GCV will just depend on armor. According to National Defense, Chiarelli said the new vehicle would be able to incorporate some kind of active protection — the ability to detect and shoot down incoming rocket-propelled grenades or anti-tank guided missiles. The service has already worked on active protection technology: The video here shows the Raytheon “Quick Kill” active protection system developed under the rubric of the FCS program.

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